Fragment of What Death Won't Hold
by triplexholic
Summary: Man and woman, and the blood (death) and water (birth) running through them: transforming them. Transforming the world. Virgin & her Little Son-god. [fragment of a larger work] Rated M for Graphic Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, and yes, maybe a little Heresy.


**This is part of a larger story, "What Death Won't Hold," focusing on the humanity and divinity of Jesus and the experiences of the Virgin Mother: not meant to be a theological piece, though it definitely incorporates theology. **

**I don't want to post the entire story yet. It's actually not finished yet. This portion has been slightly edited so as to stand on its own.**

**I don't mean offense to anyone who thinks/believes anything different than what's expressed in the artwork.**

* * *

**Death** ii

"My kingdom isn't of this world," he insists. "If it were, my servants would be fighting to deliver me from these people. But, as it is: I'm here, my kingdom far away..."

"So you _are_ a king!"

He nods. "Yes. For all this," he lifts his hand, indicating life and the world, "I was born. I came into this world, this realm, to endure and bear witness. I'm the truth, and so I testify to the truth. The one truth."

The governor is touched. He sighs and shakes his head, wondering...

"Everyone in league with truth hears my voice," he continues.

"What is truth?" the governor asks, without any need for a verbal response, in fact, without needing any response. This governor ushers him outside and makes the case for him, gesticulating wildly to the crowd and back at him. He stays very small.

The world desires revolution. Rebellion, mayhem, transparency: ascendance of its own accord, not what he's offering. He's always known. It doesn't lessen betrayal's bad sting. It doesn't soften the blow. It doesn't...

He never expected to feel so afraid and alive and certain of so many things. He never expected it like this.

Inside the Praetorium, brutes manhandle him, pressing, breathing foul against skin still perfumed from the night before. They speak like devils, devil-things and obscenities. They pervert his notorious sayings. They humiliate his beauty. He does nothing. Not even when they strip him, first the tunic, and when they tug at the trousers, he bites down a gasp of horror. But then they're called out to the square. When he's pushed out, stripped from the waist up and shackled, he knows he'll see her. When he does, the bleach-white sunlight singling out her shocked expression, small tears fall that she'll have to witness this savagery.

He glares at the peon daring to orchestrate all this. He sees the enemy's work written all over his face. He sees the tools he's going to be mangled with.

The soldiers continue their harassment, and he blinks away his tears and wills himself to look at her. In her eyes, she's speaking of how things will never be the same. He nods. Before the first strike, she mouths, "you'll always be perfect," and then pain lights his mind up like kerosene. His lungs can't breathe. There's blurry blackness of vision, twinkling lights. Then another explosion of pain, ripping through flesh and reality, rattling everything he knows to be true. Can he breathe now? He tries. No.

"_OH_," he chokes at three, proving his lungs still function, proving he's alive.

The entire world spins and sparkles. Four. "AAHAhh!"

He's being shred from behind, as if someone were ripping off angel's wings. His head pounds a mallet's time. Five. _What's this dripping, wet, wet?_ Oh yes. Blood rains down his silken back. Urine pours down his thighs, he realizes. The coppery smell of everything pierces him- six. He lurches forward against the pillar he's chained to, and springs right back relentless, like electroshock.

Seven. _Hard_. His shoulder blades feel like they've shattered. He's dizzy. Suffocated already. Eight.

She's a pillar of diamond purity, virginal strength, even if he can't see her well. Nine. The spirits and angels are descending for her. Ten. She's standing at a distance, unfurling regalia. Eleven. No one notices she's no longer just a tribal woman but a queen of heaven. Twelve, _ah_. They're adorning her with blackest silks, richest velvet and long veils of lace. Thirteen. Nothing will match the blackness of her gaze. Fourteen. The righteous indignation and inconsolable anguish. Fifteen. The painting of it appears before his eyes. Sixteen. Beautiful. Powerful, terrifying. His knees give out and he falls. Seventeen. "Perfect... woman..." Eighteen. "...my beauti... ful..."

"What's that?" cries one of the devils torturing him.

Nineteen, _thrash_. He groans obscenely loud.

"You actually like this!" cries his abuser in astonished glee. "Sick whore! this is supposed to be a punishment." The two soldiers must then change their tools.

He's gazing at his mother looking like the goddess of destruction under the midday sun, a crown of twelve stars upon her night-time veils, her complexion blanched with scarlet blood adorning the fury of her mouth. Their eyes meet. In hers, amber like his own, he sees past her sadness and despair, past her scorching outrage, to the shining pride... to her confidence, her devotion. Her respect. Her trust. She blinks and tears glitter down her cheeks. Then, she's all tenderness. All these things is woman. Woman can strum all these emotions of the soul as though strumming the sweetest-sounding instrument.

"I love you," she mouths. He can endure anything.

One of the soldiers kneels beside him and grabs a fistful of hair. The soldier yanks it up to show him the new weapon, the wretched cat-of-nine-tails with jagged metal at the knots.

"I really think you're going to like this one, sweetheart," the soldier breathes in his ear. "Be good and cry loud for me, all right?" pulling his head back to suck at his throat until a hideous bruise blooms. The devil hisses other filthy things before the guard, laughing, commands he get up and get the thing done already. The soldier rises and dangles the leather straps.

He's trembling uncontrollably now, nauseous from loss of blood and the saliva slobbered all over him. He thinks perhaps this is the time and manner in which he'll die, under the mercilessness of the cat-of-nine-tails and because the only probable way that soldier can satisfy himself is murder.

He must get up. The welts are swelling: aching and bleeding. In valiance he rises to his feet, his limbs protesting. His beloved woman's there in front of him, flanked by two loyal children and dozens of unseen angels. He can see her working to stay dauntless. Her hands and her jaw are trembling, eyes wide. He closes his eyes. The first scourge of the cat-of-nines throws him forward so he bangs against the pillar, then wrenches away in such a manner that his spine jackknifes. His ragged wail makes all those watching gasp. The soldiers cackle.

Disoriented, he gulps oxygen, rasping, not ever having been prepared. He falls to his knees, shocked from the agony. He thinks he'll never rise again.

A boot kicks him square where the whip had ripped off flesh, pounding him into the ground. He mewls helplessly.

"_There_... there's a Jew. We couldn't have you spilling.. ah, _love songs_..." the soldier chuckles, "being punished."

"Let up, we'll pay if he's found dead."

"Fine, we'll take turns."

He crawls his way to the pillar. He must kneel up. He thinks of mother, even if he can't see anything. He's kneeling. He'd be toppled over if he weren't clinging to the pillar.

Twenty-one, with a standard flail. "Ah." Twenty-two, the cat-of-nine-tails. "AHHhhAAAAa Ah Ohhh... OH!" It's horrendous, he'll never get used to it. They laugh and mock his reaction. Twenty-three. His body shivers. He knows the cat-of-nine is coming again and he cries out before it hits him, so that when it's pulled away- bits of bloody flesh with it- twenty-four- he just intensifies the cry. Twenty-five feels like a caress. Twenty-six grips him like claws, the weapon true to its name. He cries out without shame. Twenty-seven, and he thinks he's going to faint. Twenty-eight. He tumbles to the ground.

"We got to wait."

"Damn. Not very pretty and perfumed anymore, is he?"

"He's better like this."

"Sick bastard. Think he understands Latin?"

"...Of course he does. Right, puppy?" The soldier snaps the whip upon the sand.

"Punk," the other soldier insults him. "You wanted to be a king, huh?"

Fighting nausea and the urge to faint, he crawls again to the post. He's thinking of her. He barely sees her in the sunlight but it's like she's the Greek Athena or the Hindu Kali: a terrifying goddess of power, and she's transforming the grief in her soul to faith- the most powerful of processes, the true and only way for the universe to move toward fulfillment. She's his love. Here's his comfort, his strength and his will.

Twenty-nine. Thirty. His back gives out. Thirty-one. Almost. Thirty-two. He crumbles but not completely. He thrusts back up to his knees, crying. Thirty-three. Thirty-four. He collapses completely. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. He hears her ragged cry, black, black and deep as his vision. It keeps him conscious.

"Is that the wife? Mother?"

"Whore, maybe. Ugly."

"AAaaaaAAAAAHH, ARGH!" He bellows at the sky, pulling his arms around the pillar.

"We offended the king!" They cackle.

He kneels up, and he doesn't know how. Through the wretched vertigo, lack of oxygen, and the yawning of the mouth of death before him, he thanks the will of the universe he's affectionately called father. If he dies now he's ready. The desert sun on his face stings gently.

Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight, and it's the worst for it's the last of the cat-of-nine-tails. The soldier is an expert. Once the metal bits have attached deeply to the flesh the soldier pulls just enough to force the victim to crawl reflexively backwards, trying to dis-attach himself until he can't crawl anymore and the claws wrench off. But, this victim is a master of reflexes and won't stand to be dangled quite so, even if it means death. He grips the pillar and allows the whip to more tortuously rip away until it's yanked off way too much skin, and this is what causes him to black out completely and not feel thirty nine.

He comes to about a minute later because they're dumping water on him and yelling.

* * *

She's in a dark corner, unseen to anyone, unseen to humans. Hidden.

"Oh, no!" she cries, and the group of angels consoling her despair. "I... I can't-" She presses a hand to a heart that's been scourged a thousand times by the cat-of-nine-tails. "Live... I can't possibly go on, no..." She shakes her head in denial of the obscenity. "Noo.. no, noo, why? Oh, why!?" She wants to to sink away, disappear.

"I want to feel what he feels!" she wails to them.

Half a dozen angels unfurl their plumes and envelop her in a mantle of feathers. She collapses in a ruined heap and yells and sobs, cursing the vilest enemy ten-thousand times.

"My king," she whispers in the dark, "you who are perfect: tell me what to do with my miseries. I beg you..."

Give them to me... put your trust in me. This burden doesn't belong to you. It's mine and you have no reason to be sad about that.

"They're breaking you." She pushes trembling hands through her hair. "Piece by piece! And they're breaking me, help!"

Be perfect, then. Believe in me, that's all I need from you. Believe there'll be no more death.

"Then, give me strength to believe, lord, please! Having borne you, nourished you with my own flesh... For each lash they inflict on you, there's two on my soul that I can't take them from you."

I will. Be glad for this pain. You're the favored creation of the lord, your love for me is magnified to you, and all nations will call you blessed. Ave Maria.

Ima...

She sighs. She rubs her exhausted eyes. "All right. This pain becomes joy, dear heart... only through your grace." She must get up now. She must face it. "For you." The angels withdraw their plumes and woman stands like a perfect storm before the square puddled entirely by her son's crimson pain.

Meanwhile, the terrible truth remains that the same soldiers, fearing reprimand, are compelled to treat his wounds. Inside the Praetorium again, the mockery they bestow is as painful as the lashes: first, they force wine down his throat till he chokes; then while they sponge him and apply healing unctions, they press achingly at the wounds; as they wipe away the blood from his limbs, from his torso, they cover his eyes and grip him intimately, whispering, while he bites away his helplessness; then to keep his hair off his face, they place a diadem of rose-branches and the sting of both thorns and mockery brings tears to his eyes; to keep him from losing consciousness they keep slapping him awake, feeding him more and more wine. Finally, in order to hide the gruesome wounds from the governor, they bestow over his shoulders a violet robe and laugh at the irony.

He appears before the crowd. Man, crowned in pain and hatred. God, blinded and defiled. They all agree to kill him.

* * *

"I willingly carry this burden." That beam towers before him, making him small. "Through fear and uncertainty, oh, you: infinite reality." His hands whisper around the splintered edges and he speaks to it, hiccuping from wine, "you come with me, pillar of darkness. I'll petition for you, we'll wait."

"Totally insane," says the new commander (a centurion) of this execution, to one of his subordinates. "At least we're putting him out of his misery."

The path ahead is a narrow, winding, almost romantic road sliced through the zig-zag-zig city YRUSALAYM now shiny from the king's beautification only a few years before. The day is glittery with sunlight. There are many, many, too many, people gathered making noise. The centurion feels the blood pounding in his veins, and doesn't know why. His horse is acting irritably.

"Is it just these three?" the centurion asks the governor. The governor nods. The governor looks... well, he seems like... It seems he's not looking out from his own eyes anymore.

"Shit, well, all right. Start moving people out of the way!" the centurion yells. The centurion turns toward the three prisoners, two with the normal expressions of men about to die, the other- the lunatic, or warlock, or whatever he was accused of being- with a disconcerting look of attentiveness, and tells them to follow him.

He's the smallest of the three. Half his back has just been skinned off by the flail, soaking red the back of his tunic. The scratchy rose vine presses achingly into his hairline, but it keeps hair away from his eyes. He was hit square in the jaw last night, and there's a loose tooth on the bottom row he's been trying all day to unhinge. The ugliest thing about his appearance, though, are the bruise-blooms. Red and purple bouquets along his wrists, a crude teeth-azalea on his neck, and inside his thighs... some... bite-marks patterned like (poisoned) ivy... that no one will see until they're placing his cadaver in the tomb.

And yet he's the first to, without hesitation, wrap arms expertly around that wooden beam and let the weight of it fall onto his shoulders. Fall and fall, and it's almost easy and light for the first handful of minutes until he can't anymore and he falls.

People tremble with the sudden chill-current running through the dusty wind, and the clouds are flooding, the sky's cracking open and the thunder rumbles. The firmament trembles and no one knows why. It's her doing. She slips like blackest smoke through the throng and slides unharmed just along soldier's blades before anyone can realize.

Strewn on the ground next to him, sand billowing all around, time's stopped... or slowed. The angels unfurl their wings in anticipation.

"Fate[Father]'s caught up with you!" she cries, because thunder can't be stopped and it's loud.

"Praise be, we're the same...!"

She furiously kisses his face. The floodgates break, he kisses back.

"I must let you continue." She weeps dirty-red, cradling his face. "I won't detain you!"

Time speeds to catch up, sucking the breath from the lungs of life for a vital moment.

"What was that!?" cries the centurion.

People are looking out windows, or looking to the sky, all around the city. She murmurs more words- of comfort and gratitude, of love and loyalty- that no one knows, because the thunder forms a cacophonic orchestra and living things are shaking.

"Forgive me!" she hears behind her, and his youngest disciple- his chosen sweetheart, the only one with the strength to endure witnessing his lord's passion- wraps her in iron and lifts her away, and it's just in time because there'd have been no stopping the soldiers from hurting her. It starts drizzling rain as the exhausted little saint half-carries half-walks her away from God and the crowd and Jews and Romans and devils. Her cries shame the black of the sky. Dogs in that area of the city whine, birds flutter, and the donkeys bray, all at the loud, supernatural sounds, at the shift and change in barometer, and the way all nature groans in pain.

* * *

The ascent had begun in the low land of KFAR NAHUM a few years ago and pinnacled in this YRUSALAYM, and yet there was still more to climb. "All this can be yours, if you bow down," the enemy devil had once told him, but where he'd been standing wasn't high enough.

She glares at the swirling sky, fluorescent with lightning, and gazes on the gentle slope Skull Hill [GULGALTA] amounts to. Kissing heaven. She's a silky crow's feather, the wind fluttering her scarves and veils, against the grey-brown of the cliff. A little behind her, her baby's bleeding under that too-long wooden tree-cross. When he was a child, he had an uncanny ability of knowing what was too heavy for him in the shop. He looks like he's carrying too much, but he's not. The angels intervene as much as fate[Father] will allow them, whispering to the man from Cyrene, who drags it along with him, to the woman called true image, to lamenting women.

She waits. For him, she knows he knows. She'll climb this with him. She'll be pierced with him, too. By him. Her heart's already made pulp, it can withstand anything. It's less like pain now, more like...

He finally reaches her and she's startled by how upset he is. He looks angrily at the young one. The young disciple shakes his head, as if to say, _I couldn't take her away_. He gives her a look of deep sympathy, he's so exhausted, so ready for death. But then it's gotten to be too much for the strong Cyrene man and he must turn and take the full weight of the wooden beam again and drag it along the muddy sands again by its crux. The rose-vine has fallen forward from his hairline to his forehead. The scratches against the delicate skin there bleed.

She follows his every step now, and the centurion doesn't even care. The sky's too ominous, it's bad fortune to get in the way of mothers and dying sons. Besides, it's only this one last swell of hill, and he can't say why he's so moved by these innocent-looking people's bad fate.

* * *

"Strip him."

Those hardened subordinates get self-conscious. The condemned man seems so calm and sad, after all. Though, maybe he's just too near the point of unconsciousness. Nevertheless, one must unlace the blood-drenched laces of the tunic, opening it to shudder at the wounds on his once-perfect back, while the other yanks it off from the front. He toes out of his muddy shoes, without being ordered to. Then they go to work on his trousers. One holds him steady while the other shimmies the material down and pulls each leg off.

"Nice things," comments one soldier, fingering the hem of the tunic. "I'm taking the shirt. The blood'll wash out."

"That's the best thing, gamble me for it."

"We'll gamble for everything, the shoes are better than they look now."

Then, as if he'd merely been a mannequin for showcase, the soldier shoves him to the ground with one hand.

* * *

"Lay flat upon it, you know how this is."

He grants her one glance, one sad smile. Then he looks timidly up at the firmament and begins laying himself...

"Too slow."

He's kicked down, and actually falls off the side from the force of impact. His shoulder blade-bone shatters and the flogging wounds reopen.

"I'll tie this arm."

* * *

"RaaAAAAHHHHH AHH AH OHHOW, OH OH. OHHH!"

"VILLAINS! You... murderers." She whimpers, refusing to look away though both young ones accompanying her cry. "_Nailing_... my heart's..." she trails, eyes lined with black and rose. "Killing my child."

The soldier stands and spits at the ground. He gets another nail then squats back down to the crucifixion.

"I'm no villain, Jew, you are," the soldier tells him, lining up the twelve-inch nail, the one for the feet.

"Oohh, they don't know..." he wails, shifting his head from side to side. "Forgive them, AH. AAHH! Oohh... They don't know what they- AAHHRRGGH! OH! NO NO- Aaaoowww... AH, AH, OOHHH. OH! OWAHH!"

The splintering shatter of bones. The twisted body. The torn-up flesh, muscles, tendons, and the screaming reflexes. They hoist the gnarled trees up. Three, there's a human nailed to each. Humans are not meant to be nailed to trees. They aren't created for such things.

Except the one in the center.

"He doesn't deserve it!" cries one of the other two. "He's innocent! Pure! Oh, lord... Lord! Remember me, please!"

"Hear the truth," he chokes, his lungs beginning the collapse toward the cage of ribs, "that today... you'll be with me..."

* * *

"Woman!" he cries. "Oh, woman..."

"Yes!"

"...Woman, behold your Son!"

"I do Him." She sobs.

He winces.

"Child of my heart," he tenderly speaks the young disciple's name, "... behold your precious mother..." He tips his head back. "Why has fa... fate[Father]... forsaken me?" He coughs. He swallows. "I thirst."

He can feel it coming. He knows. He's experiencing things he never has before... The dark swirl, the soft unknown, the sad bleeding of despair and goodbye, all laced in relief. The bones are piercing his lungs, draining his breath. His virgin body shivers...

Death pulls him.

"It's done!" he tells her. Clouds drip fat hot raindrops. His eyes turn two shades lighter, like a tawny yellow sunset-storm, and widen. Fear. There's fear and romance in this death, sacredness and profanity.

"Ah, my heart," she sighs from the ground where she's collapsed, and smiles with abandon.

He throws his head, inhales rain and flutters butterfly lashes.

"Into fate's[Father's] hands... I commit..." he can barely say it, it's so cruel... "my sp... irit."

His head lolls elegantly, mouth tightening before it slackens in a sigh, as he breathes the sacred YHWH which all humans say whenever they breathe. Death takes it away, and YHWH-God goes where he's never gone before- to limits unknown. The electric body slackens. The heart is stopping, the lungs are pierced, and there's no more struggle against gravity. He falls upon the ropes and nails that pin him like a rare butterfly. Falls, falls down and forward, bones, muscles, organs, blood. Over.

The earth rebels. Time. Space. The earth rebels, she's summoned to her neutral lord and all things tremble with her effort. The humans experience it as a tremendous earthquake but all the rest of nature knows what's going on. Things as the world once knew are transforming, it's the unknown part of the plan. Wind, earth, fire and water try... They try coming all at once, they need him.

As the demons rise from the depths of hell, the angels descend in multitudes to outnumber the enemies. A soldier has pierced the body. It pours virgin blood (and water) onto the earth, and the earth begins trying to sort herself around this.

"YOU ENABLER!" the great enemy roars at mother over thunder. "WOMAN, YOU FOUL ACCOMPLICE!"

From among throngs of angels protecting her, she cries: "Enemy of love and orchestrator of chaos, you show yourself at your defeat?" She's lit on fire. "How dare you!" Lightning shines. "Go, monstrous angel- pity your existence as long as your king allows it."

"I will rule," the devil screams but the earth is too vicious and trembles up the spirits. The rain is pouring.

Only she can bear this, and remains still and unfazed: the earth's inside her heart reacting to her suffering. The two young humans are amazed at this, they don't know what they're seeing. They're limited. All around, people have abandoned the dark, strange death hill and the soldiers work to get the wet bodies down from the trees.

She stands below his tree and catches him, a limp heavy body, and they help it settle in her arms. She falls to the ground with it. The storm calms, though the sky remains dark- midnight in the afternoon.

The soldiers are subdued, the two children gone very still. The legions of unseen angels flutter wings, sadly, brushing against one another in pain while their beloved mistress suffers at the lost lord. They can't bear to look and yet they all do. It's terrifying seeing angels weep. The devils shriek at this tenderness and, rather than burn with humiliation before their enemies they return to the place of defeat.

She has eyes only for her son.

"Ah, my little boy," she rocks the body slightly. "I miss you already, my one. Aren't you still beautiful? Yes. Baby, you are." She slips off the rose vine. "There. Oh, you were so brave." Her vision is blurry, but she blinks away the endless tears so she may keep gazing. He could be sleeping, death fits him so perfectly: mouth curved, brows straight and calm, forehead clear. She kisses the forehead, mopping the bloody scratches with her lips. She caresses the cheek, runs her thumb along the breathless lips. "Oh, my love, where've you gone? Your Ima misses you... Rest, now. Rest, my soul. My one and only." She leans down and whispers in the ear, "I love you. I love, love you," and kisses the jaw, tastes her son's fear and the faint perfume, "and I thank you... and praise you..." her expression screws up, "and will see you again."

Time passes in a strange way. Heaven, hell, earth and every place have merged and no one will ever be able to tell just how. The sky... is open. The sky... swirls. It's every color come together to create something sad and broken. It's a ripped rainbow prisming through the yellow clouds. It must do. It must be sufficient. He's still present. His essence lingers, and we wait.

The young disciple will write about this better than I have, and of more visions. He's chosen. He'll go on to take woman as his own mother. The beloved disciple is- as are all beloved disciples- charged: to love the virgin mother called Maria as much as her divine son does. She who witnesses birth and death.

There's much more the great woman of the world experiences after this pietà, and there was a great deal more before. It's woman's fate to know and understand all things, to possess strength in blackest dark, to flourish in the light of the divine sun. But, here in the peace she knows, though her heart's lanced, though she cradles the withered fruit of her womb, there's wisdom.

In the peace she knows- believing, transforming, witnessing- she's being filled with grace.

And she waits, up on Death's Hill.

Amen, for now. Amen, Amen and a little bit Women.

* * *

**Based on the Gospels of John Chapters 18-19, and Luke 23, and Matthew 27, and Mark 15. **

**Ima: Mommy, from Hebrew אמא  
YRUSALAYM: Jerusalem, phonetically from Hebrew ירושלים  
KFAR NAHUM: Capernaum, phonetically from Hebrew כְּפַר נַחוּם  
GULGALTA: Golgotha/Calvary from Aramaic גולגלתא**

**Thank you for reading **


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